Overview

Baked by Mark Haskell Smith

Miro Basinas is an experimental botanist who sells his rarefied product to a discerning clientele. Only Miro’s not growing heirloom tomatoes or making organic winehe’s growing weed. And when Miro hits the big time by winning Amsterdam’s famed Cannabis Cup, cannasseurs and ganjaficionados aren’t the only people who want a piece of him and his mind-blowing pot that tastes like mangoes.

A wickedly funny novel, Baked opens with a bang as Miro is cut down by a bullet. A mild-mannered hipster who doesn’t know the first thing about revengeor even who shot himMiro is soon on a quest to recover his prize invention and to secure his place as the Floyd Zaiger (creator of the pluot) of weed. It’s a journey packed with a delicious cast of characters, including a string-theory obsessed cop, a kinky paramedic, a Mormon missionary struggling to keep his “sap” under control in a city that is the personification of sex, a half-Irish-half-Salvadoran drug dealer and his dim-witted associates, a cougar starlet, and an entrepreneur who wants to turn his medical marijuana Compassion Centers into the Starbucks of pot. Baked is a hilarious, rip-roaring romp from a talented, utterly original novelist.

Product Details

About the Author

Mark Haskell Smith is the author of five novels, Moist, Delicious, Salty, Baked, and Raw, and the non-fiction Heart of Dankness: Underground Botanists, Outlaw Farmers, and the Race for the Cannabis Cup. His work has also appeared in the Los Angeles Times, Vulture, National Post, and the Los Angeles Review of Books. Smith is an award-winning screenwriter and assistant professor in the MFA program for Writing and Writing for the Performing Arts at the University of California, Riverside, Palm Desert Graduate Center. He lives in Los Angeles. He likes Mexican food.

Read an Excerpt

Mark Haskell Smith is the author of five novels, Moist, Delicious, Salty, Baked, and Raw, and the non-fiction Heart of Dankness: Underground Botanists, Outlaw Farmers, and the Race for the Cannabis Cup. His work has also appeared in the Los Angeles Times, Vulture, National Post, and the Los Angeles Review of Books. Smith is an award-winning screenwriter and assistant professor in the MFA program for Writing and Writing for the Performing Arts at the University of California, Riverside, Palm Desert Graduate Center. He lives in Los Angeles. He likes Mexican food.

First Chapter

Mark Haskell Smith is the author of five novels, Moist, Delicious, Salty, Baked, and Raw, and the non-fiction Heart of Dankness: Underground Botanists, Outlaw Farmers, and the Race for the Cannabis Cup. His work has also appeared in the Los Angeles Times, Vulture, National Post, and the Los Angeles Review of Books. Smith is an award-winning screenwriter and assistant professor in the MFA program for Writing and Writing for the Performing Arts at the University of California, Riverside, Palm Desert Graduate Center. He lives in Los Angeles. He likes Mexican food.

Table of Contents

Mark Haskell Smith is the author of five novels, Moist, Delicious, Salty, Baked, and Raw, and the non-fiction Heart of Dankness: Underground Botanists, Outlaw Farmers, and the Race for the Cannabis Cup. His work has also appeared in the Los Angeles Times, Vulture, National Post, and the Los Angeles Review of Books. Smith is an award-winning screenwriter and assistant professor in the MFA program for Writing and Writing for the Performing Arts at the University of California, Riverside, Palm Desert Graduate Center. He lives in Los Angeles. He likes Mexican food.

Reading Group Guide

Mark Haskell Smith is the author of five novels, Moist, Delicious, Salty, Baked, and Raw, and the non-fiction Heart of Dankness: Underground Botanists, Outlaw Farmers, and the Race for the Cannabis Cup. His work has also appeared in the Los Angeles Times, Vulture, National Post, and the Los Angeles Review of Books. Smith is an award-winning screenwriter and assistant professor in the MFA program for Writing and Writing for the Performing Arts at the University of California, Riverside, Palm Desert Graduate Center. He lives in Los Angeles. He likes Mexican food.

Interviews

Mark Haskell Smith is the author of five novels, Moist, Delicious, Salty, Baked, and Raw, and the non-fiction Heart of Dankness: Underground Botanists, Outlaw Farmers, and the Race for the Cannabis Cup. His work has also appeared in the Los Angeles Times, Vulture, National Post, and the Los Angeles Review of Books. Smith is an award-winning screenwriter and assistant professor in the MFA program for Writing and Writing for the Performing Arts at the University of California, Riverside, Palm Desert Graduate Center. He lives in Los Angeles. He likes Mexican food.

Recipe

Mark Haskell Smith is the author of five novels, Moist, Delicious, Salty, Baked, and Raw, and the non-fiction Heart of Dankness: Underground Botanists, Outlaw Farmers, and the Race for the Cannabis Cup. His work has also appeared in the Los Angeles Times, Vulture, National Post, and the Los Angeles Review of Books. Smith is an award-winning screenwriter and assistant professor in the MFA program for Writing and Writing for the Performing Arts at the University of California, Riverside, Palm Desert Graduate Center. He lives in Los Angeles. He likes Mexican food.

Editorial Reviews

“As cockeyed and riotous as Carl Hiaasen on really good dope.” Kirkus Reviews

“A wickedly funny blast of a book featuring a fast-moving multilayered plot, prose that has a smart, jazzy swing, and moments of shivery unease.”Richard Rayner, Los Angeles Times

“Baked, Mark Haskell Smith’s very funny fourth crime novel, tells a sprawling story and it’s quite a mix: a sweet love story, raunchy sex, outrageous behavior, and a couple of murders, all of it laced with plenty of profanity. In short, this irreverent gonzo crime novel is not for the faint of heart. But it’s a great trip for the right reader.” Hallie Ephron, Boston Globe

“If books came with MPAA ratings, Smith’s fourth novel would definitely get an NC-17. Rest assured that the novel contains plenty of drug references, drug use, and sexual content. But it’s also a tightly plotted, well-paced caper with a message, à la Carl Hiaasen. VERDICT Not for the easily offended or the president of your local D.A.R.E. chapter, but an enjoyable ride for the rest of us.” Library Journal

“Connoisseurs of absurdist humor will find him working at the top of his game here.”Booklist

“Between these covers, my friends, Mark Haskell Smith has harvested and served up the best kind of hybrid: at once a pulp mystery, demented comedy, and meditation on little ideas like greed, desire, and decency. Baked is original, subversive, a bit mind-expanding, and fully irresistiblea laugh a minute romp through a cultural moment just screwed up enough to be recognizably our own. You won't have time to exhale. Nor will you want to.” Charles Bock, author of Beautiful Children

“From the first sentence of Baked, which is so perfect it will have other writers eating their arms, Mark Haskell Smith grabs the reader by the throat and half-drags, half-gooses them through a laugh-out-loud, thrill-a-minute, tour de force of bad behavior, weirdness and contemporary illegal commerce. For years, the author's work has been an open secret to connoisseurs of monstro prose and outrageous, transcend-the-genre crime action. With Baked, Mark Haskell Smith may just have written his masterpiece. The writing is addictively brilliant enough to render it a Schedule Three narcotic. I defy anyone to put Baked down without wanting more. It's so good you'll lose your short-term memory.”Jerry Stahl

"Murder, mayhem, marijuana and Mormons--what more could you ask for in a crime novel? Bakedgrabs you by the sacred underpants and doesn't let up 'til the last page."Lisa Lutz, author of The Spellman Files

“Smith has a knack for winningly blending James Ellroy blunt violence with Elmore Leonard deadpan wit. With his new Baked, however, Smith approaches even rarer heights. In this dash through L.A.’s medical marijuana industry, Smith doesn’t so much twist reality to give it a more comic edge as realize ordinary people can be pretty f@#king mental all on their own. And with its lovingly ordinary absurdity, Baked starts to approach the gimlet-eyed barbed satire of Terry Southern.” Baltimore City Paper

"One of the funniest and most entertaining books I’ve read in a long time.” Spinetingler Magazine

“It is rare to find a novel that is both a true thriller and outright hilarious. If you treasure that combination as much as I do when it's done right, then you'll want to practically inhale Baked, the unique, drug-fueled romp from Mark Haskell Smith.”Austin Camacho, The Big Thrill

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

"Baked" has got to be Mark's best work yet. It is completely wild and funny and at the same time the writing is very tight and clean. He has incredible characters in unimaginable circumstances and he pulls it all off like it is completely natural. A lesser writer might try to use Mark's type of material to flash and awe the reader, distract them from the actual writing. Mark doesn't do that, though. The insane aspects are fully integrated with all the necessary components of a good story. They contribute to the whole rather than distract or prop up. Mark really roars on all cylinders in this book. Anyone who doesn't read it is seriously missing out.

harstan

More than 1 year ago

In Los Angeles botanist Miro Basinas is shot. One month earlier, Miro competed in the international Cannabis Cup tournament in Amsterdam. Stunningly his Elephant Crush won the gold medal at the competition because of its wonderful flavoring that tastes like mango.
Miro thought by entering his prize specialty grown weed he would hit the big time especially after he won. Now in a hospital as he recovers from being shot he learns his seed has been stolen by predatory capitalists who plan to sell his cannabis. He vows revenge, but has no idea how one goes about becoming an avenger as this is comic books or a movie and he is a weed botanist; besides he has no idea who shot him and stole his seed as several predators, besides the usual suspects, surface.
This is a dark amusing crime caper starring a half baked capitalist botanist and a horde of eccentric characters who run the gamut of stereotypical free market idealists. Although the support cast can strain the story line with too much quirkiness, readers who enjoy something different will appreciate the battle of the capitalists who want to sell legally at medical marihuana "Starbucks" and illegally on the streets, Miro blend with or without his cooperation; as competition is cutthroat.
Harriet Klausner